That’s what several people close to the deal now say happened behind the scenes last week, as per the Wall Street Journal.
Just days before the U.S.–backed AI cluster was announced in Abu Dhabi, with OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia, Cisco, and SoftBank all in Musk personally phoned G42 executives and delivered a warning: the deal wouldn’t get past Trump unless xAI was included.
Musk had caught wind that Sam Altman was not only part of the delegation to the Gulf, but that OpenAI had quietly been chosen as the lead partner on one of the world’s largest AI data center projects. He was furious.
According to White House officials, Musk threatened to derail the deal, prompting a last-minute internal review. Trump officials, reportedly eager to show momentum on AI before the trip ended, moved forward anyway, and Musk, once again, was left on the sidelines as Altman stood front and centre.
It wasn’t the first time.
In January, when the U.S. version of Stargate (a $500B project with OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank) was unveiled, Musk, who was inside the White House complex, found out in real time. He was blindsided, and went straight to X to post his frustrations.
The tension between Musk and Altman isn’t just personal. It’s existential. Their companies are competing for compute, talent, partnerships, and state alignment. That rivalry is now playing out at the level of sovereign deals, where access to GPU exports, legal frameworks, and land allocations have become the new front lines.
The coda? After all the drama, xAI was later added to the shortlist of U.S. companies conditionally approved to receive chips under the new framework. Not nothing, but also, not Stargate.
